


Patience

by PeniG



Series: Akashic Records [14]
Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Aziraphale POV, Dagon POV, Dagon's a demon she's not nice, Other, POV Crowley (Good Omens), She/Her Pronouns for Dagon (Good Omens), The Great War, World War I, animal cruelty, demonic work, not dwelt on though, nothing graphic, self-harm sort of, the long nap, the rude awakening, wwi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-23
Updated: 2019-10-25
Packaged: 2020-12-31 15:40:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 9,528
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21148115
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PeniG/pseuds/PeniG
Summary: Crowley's asleep, Hell doesn't know that, and Aziraphale gets to hold things together. What fun. (Dagon thinks so.)Direct sequel to "Fraternizing."





	1. Investigation

Crowley was Dagon’s favorite tempter; a low bar to get over, but he cleared it stylishly enough. He did good work, his reports were succinct and witty, he was always the first to accept (and often the first to suggest) innovations that made her life easier, and his demeanor toward her always had a comfortable fear: respect ratio. That didn’t mean she trusted him, because she was not an idiot, but it did mean that she supported the long leash Satan had put him on, as a general rule, and remembered to use his new name about half the time. It also meant that, when the Files showed her a pattern with him in it, she checked it out, personally. She could count on her investigators to deal with the common-or-garden subterfuges of the common-or-garden demonic agent, but the Serpent of Eden, not so much. Besides, the odds were good she’d get some fun out of it, and a demon in her position of responsibility needed as much fun as she could get.

After her day trip to London, she settled back into her accustomed place, in the Hall of Records, at the big desk with all the pigeonholes, and the pneumatic tubes, and the chair that rolled, and the speaking tube, permanently anchored at her end, that could manifest at the ear of any being in Hell in order to convey information and/or her will. The space was dank, and smelly, and absolutely hers, lit by pale phosphorescence that gave her minions eyestrain. Even Beelzebub didn’t annoy her in here as she read reports, and correlated facts, and tracked numbers, and waited to see how Crowley’s reports changed in response to her visit, because she _knew_ she’d put the wind up him good and hard, and she _knew_ he’d been in a hurry to get her out of Soho, and his response was sure to be interesting.

So she was _fascinated_ when his reports began to come in more regularly, but were otherwise unaltered. Compliance reports, a quick rundown of the way evil influences in the British government seeped out to poison other locations, detailed expositions on fashions and trends and technology (he reveled in his Sloth and Vanity so much!), at least one new practical joke or annoying catchphrase or some such per report, and that damn lazy close: _AHS_ instead of _All Hail Satan_, followed by the most slapdash abbreviation of a sigil anyone in Hell had ever been allowed to get away with. Once in awhile he’d mention his local adversary in a breezy and impersonal way, and he never mentioned the experiment she’d observed in operation, at all.

Perhaps she hadn’t scared him as much as she’d thought?

At any given time, Dagon had a dozen nascent investigations in hand, and she took her time about them. Due to the way British influence had spread around the world, Crowley had the potential to overlap with about half her current batch; but a close perusal didn’t turn up anything remotely like conspiracy. So she pulled a bunch of folders on innocuous minor tempters who’d been on assignments within or near his sphere of influence, not sure what she was looking for.

If you knew what you looked for you were all too likely to overlook what you needed to see, so she opened her mind up and read mountains of reports from demons who would normally be too petty for her eyes, which was how the name “Mr. Fell” came to her notice. She pulled more files, scanning for the name, and yes, every single demon banished from Britain in the time period checked had been banished by an angel who introduced himself as Mr. Fell, which was weird all on its own. What kind of angel _introduced_ himself? And _Fell?_ Bad taste, that. She liked it.

Mr. Fell always led by asking after Crowley. Where he was; did he know the demon in question was in town; what nefarious scheme of Crowley’s was this demon assisting with? The demon writing the report always insisted that he’d had no contact with Crowley, didn’t know Crowley was in whatever provincial community the encounter had occurred in, would _never dream_ of doing anything to cross the Serpent of Eden. Banishment always followed hard on the heels of Mr. Fell being satisfied of the truth of these statements.

So this Mr. Fell must be the “Mr. Fusswings” who provided the testing environment for Crowley’s experiments; his local adversary. Something was off about that, but she couldn’t put her finger on it.

When in doubt, get more files out. She waded back through all the reports related to Britain since Crowley’d asked for and received a permanent assignment there in the wake of the anti-Heaven operation in the North Sea at the end of 18th century. It was a small enough area for a pinioned demon to manage effectively, and nobody’d found it odd that he’d wanted to settle down after all the running around he’d done gathering intelligence for that endeavor. He’d missed the operation, itself, having - in his own words - “tripped over” an unnamed angel on his way to participate and gotten into a protracted, ultimately victorious, scrap to prevent the angel from warning the Host.

An unnamed angel. Huh.

That didn’t necessarily mean anything. “All fights are boring,” Crowley’d told her once. All the same, when _most_ demons beat up an angel, they were pretty forthcoming about whose fundament they’d kicked. She remembered Crowley turning up, drenched and shaky and chipper, with a trophy feather behind his ear, as the forces of Hell retreated from what had turned out to be a trap. “Guess I didn’t need to fight that one so hard,” he’d said. “Seeing they already knew all about it. Which was more’n I did, to tell the truth. Anybody going to explain to me what all that was about?”

Dagon clicked her tongue against the roof of her mouth, certain that she’d see this pattern much more clearly, if Crowley were more forthcoming about his various experiments. She’d mostly been looking to make him sweat when she’d said that place where his magic circle of evil met up with the opposing one looked like a “collaboration,” but -

But she wanted a look at this Mr. Fell.

When she was sure she’d learned everything the files would tell her on the matter, and tidied everything away, and closed a couple of other, less interesting investigations by recommending them to Beelzebub for discipline, and cleared her in-box, she logged her intention to head upstairs and left before anyone could stop her. Once topside, she modeled her clothing on Crowley’s fashion reports (bustles had replaced crinolines, lines were more vertical, fewer bonnets and more hats), and hailed a cab for Soho.

The junction of the demonic and angelic workings felt much the same as the cab jolted over it, not that she could examine anything in that moment. Dagon wasn’t sure how much earth-based time had passed since her last visit, or how significant it was in terms of how a slow but not stupid angel might work, but she would have expected Crowley to have made some progress on blocking the backwash after their conversation, and as far as she could tell, he hadn’t. Nor had the angel gained on him, though; and Soho didn’t seem to have benefited much from the angelic working: crowded, noisy, as full of smells as Hell, and on this particular cold and rainy day, at least, not much brighter. Still, something about the area made her skin ache and her teeth itch; some kind of vital energy in the air, too much color, too much movement. Too many smiles. Nausea set in, but at least part of that was the motion of the vehicle.

Dagon stopped the cab with a jerk of her chin that broke the horse’s leg. The beast screamed and thrashed amusingly, the cabbie cursed, traffic crashed around them, and humans gathered to gape and shout advice, in defiance of the freezing rain. Dagon, climbing down from the cab, turned her face up for a moment, letting the jaws of her jaunty hat refresh themselves, before turning and wading across the currents of the angelic working to find its center.

She tracked it to the corner of two busy streets, a shabby building with many-paned windows shining a glory of soft, warm light out into the world and turning sleet into drops of gold. People exited on her approach, laughing as they put up umbrellas, scurrying off in all directions exuding a robust good cheer that could not possibly derive from their mundane surroundings. Dagon hauled her skirts through tpuddles and traffic, up the steps, and inside, striding confidently to the center of the room, and of the angelic working, before the cheery bell above the door stopped tinkling.

“Good evening, madam,” said an inconsequential little man, turning over a sign hanging in the window and twisting a small device on the door. She felt something snap into place.

Dagon took a moment to turn in a circle on the round rug, her bustle following her with a few seconds’ delay, and survey the bookshop/angel’s lair she’d charged into. No humans. Lots of shelves; lots of dust; various shabby furnishings; a sales counter; colorful new books in the front giving way to dingy older ones toward the back; a spiral stair to more books; a skylight holding back the insistent knocking of the weather; a little man who looked less inconsequential, surrounded as he was now by an aura so pure and warm it stung despite its low power level; and the _sweetest_ terror she had _ever_ tasted. She grinned toothily. “Good evening, Mr. Fell.”

The angel returned a meek, shopkeepery smile. “You appear to have the advantage of me, Miss -?”

“Terious.” Dagon laughed at his expression as he sidled along the wall of the shop, as well as he could for all the shelves and books in the way. “I’ll be warning future operatives about that trick of yours. I don’t think you’ll be collecting many more names that way.”

The smile fluttered around his mouth. “I’m always astonished when it works, honestly. But you mustn’t be _too_ hard on any demons who forget your wise instructions on the topic in the future. When you’re living among humans, their manners and conventions become habits, and habits are _so_ hard to shake. Are you in town long, Miss Terious?”

“That’s hardly _your_ concern.”

“On, on the contrary.” He reached the sales counter and stood behind it, as if it would provide any noticeable protection when she struck. Unlike the walls of the shop, it did not thrum with the power of activated wards. Presumably he had weapons behind it. If he kept holy water on hand, this could get nasty fast, but she wasn’t worried, not with that terror in the air, not with his low power level, not as long as she kept a bit of distance between them. Those were not the shoulders of an angel accustomed to lobbing holy water around. “I am_ very_ concerned any time a new demon ventures into London; far more so, when she enters _my shop_. Does Mr. Crowley know you’re here?”

“Oh, he’ll come if I call him, you needn’t worry about that.” Dagon surveyed the wards on the walls with a critical eye. He’d compensated for his lack of miraculous power by braiding them into intertwining layers that strengthened each other. “Not that he’ll be able to get in right away, by the look of it. You know your stuff on the protection front, I’ll give you that. Too bad for you I’m on the wrong side of your shields.”

“How so? My charges are out_ there_. _You_ are in here.” No wonder Crowley’d dubbed him “Mr. Fusswings.” He sounded as prim as a schoolmaster; and looked it, too, as he removed his coat and folded it on top of the counter.

“So all this delicious fear is for your charges, is it?” She let her grin widen, showed a few more teeth. “It hasn’t dawned on you that I’m a_ teensy_ bit more dangerous than Crowley?”

His voice went shrill and his face did marvelous things as his hands fumbled with his cufflinks. “All the more reason for me to, to, to keep you away from my charges.”

“Relax, Mr. Fell. I’m not interested in humans right now.”

“N-no?” He started rolling up his sleeves, preparing for a fight he hadn’t a hope on earth of winning.

“No, I have a bit more of a scholarly interest here.”

His face cleared, and his voice changed significantly. “Oh! Are you here to look at the _books_? Why on earth didn’t you _say_ so! Is there a particular work you’re interested in?”

Dagon blinked, more surprised than she’d been since - all right, this wasn’t on the level of the surprise she’d felt at Falling, but it was right up there with the surprise of Crawly’s success with the apple. It was, in fact, very close to the sensation she got whenever Crowley pulled off one of his innovations: delighted relief from the predictability of existence that had set in after the first thousand years of reading and organizing reports. “Are you...are you offering to sell me a book?”

“Well, that depends. If you want something current, a novel, or poetry, or something of scientific interest, I’ll be happy to help you, of course.”

“You will?” _Of course?_

“This is a _bookshop_, madam. _You_ are a member of the general public, regardless of your professional affiliations. It’s my_ business_ to sell you books, should I have any for sale which you wish to purchase.” He started on his second sleeve. “I do, however, have an extensive library of my own, which is _not_ for sale, and if you are interested in _that_, I’m afraid I would be reluctant to let you peruse its contents, in the, in the circumstances.”

“The _circumstance_ that I’m a major demon and you’re a minor angel?”

“Exactly, yes.” He smiled and nodded; a nervous smile, and his terror levels had not diminished. He wanted her out of his shop and his city. But he apparently didn’t see any need to be rude about it, and blessed if he didn’t also want to sell her a book!

The pattern Dagon had been trying to see started coming together. “So. Has Crowley ever bought a book from you?”

“Oh! Yes, yes, many times. Most recently, um, he came in this spring, to buy _The Picture of Dorian Gray_. I’m not positive he _reads_ anything he buys, mind, but I certainly hope he read _that_ one. It’s by a, a particular friend of mine, you see, and I think the themes and subject matter could be of _special_ interest to, to someone of his and your, er, profession. It’s about temptation, and corruption, and beauty, and -” He fumbled underneath the counter without looking down. “I still have several copies if you’d -“

“I’m not interested in buying a book,” snapped Dagon, feeling glorious satisfaction as the pattern clicked into place at last. “Stop feeling around for your weapon and put your hands on the counter, please.” _Please? Where did that come from?_

Obediently, he placed two plump, pale hands between his cash box and a tray of miscellaneous desk implements. “I assure you, I have no desire to fight. I don’t like fighting.”

“Also, you would lose.” If she were to pick him up and squeeze him, what sound would come out? A huffy “Excuse me?” An indignant “Unhand me, if you please, Madam Fiend?”

“Losing is, is a matter of definition, though, isn’t it?”

Dagon chuckled. “Does that sort of argument work on Crowley?”

He licked his lips. “Poss, possibly. Sometimes. We don’t actually speak that often. I don’t know if you know Crowley very well -“

“Very well indeed. And I think you’ll find me a different kettle of fish from him, entirely, if you try chopping logic with _me_ in a way that would distract _him_. Tell me about these interlocking magical thingummybobs you two have going.”

“That’s purely self defense on my part! He’s the one who went pushing the lines! If he’d only set it up in Mayfair I might not have had to notice, but no, he had to bleed into Soho! I mean, obviously, the people in Mayfair are my charges, too, but they have so many advantages and Soho is so vulnerable and and he knows that this is my par, particular territory and if he thinks I’m going to stand for that sort of thing just because I’m not, not inclined to get smitey and so on in a populated area, he, he, he can think again!” His voice squeaked at the end of this impassioned speech, as he seized a paperknife and flourished it in the most unwarlike way possible.

Dagon couldn’t help it; she threw back her head, opened her jaws to their full width, and laughed with her whole body. The contrast of his indignation with his terror and his determination with the sheer soft _inadequacy_ of his corporation was simply too ridiculous. Normally angels made her want to rip their heads off, but this one she wanted to nibble around the edges as he struggled futilely, and watch his reaction -

The burning-sweet smell of angelic ichor cut through the scent of terror. She swallowed her merriment as he finished carving a sigil into one forearm - why did that sigil look familiar? As she stepped forward with a warning growl, he whirled to slam the cut into the wards on the wall behind the sales counter.

The pressure change in the room made her ears pop. _What the -?_

Glowing golden ichor dripped down from her own sigil on the wall, the reverse of the wound on his arm, and activated a level of working she hadn’t noticed before. “Begone, Dagon,” said Mr. Fell. “The shop is _closed_.”

The rug parted beneath her feet as she was sucked down, down, down, through the foundation (it burned), through the layers of muck and rock and groundwater beneath London, till she dropped into her own office in Hell, directly on her bustle in her rolling chair at her desk with all the pigeonholes, and the pneumatic tubes, and the speaking tube. A patter of loose mud dropped around her, before the ceiling sealed itself. All activity in the office ceased, every eye upon her.

Dagon removed her hat and shook the mud off. “What are you staring at?” She demanded. “Back to work.” She picked up the stack of folders she’d had out for the Crowley investigation, and shoved them at the nearest clerk, whose arachnid features made her a particularly useful person in the stacks. “Here, I’m finished with these.”

The demon seized them in two of her arms and scurried away. The bustle of filing, stamping, spindling, folding, and mutilating resumed around her as Dagon sat at her desk, staring at the influx of paperwork since her departure, and sorted through her reactions. That had been - had been -

That had been_ something else_, was what _that_ had been!

If anyone_ knew_ that a terrified little Guardian Angel had figured out who she was (based on what? How had she given herself away?) and knew her sigil well enough to carve it _in reverse_ into his own flesh and moreover used it to banish her, that would be humiliating and she would be fearsomely angry.

But nobody knew that, except her, and Mr. Fell. She had solved her mystery, in spades. And - Satan help her - the _look_ on his face? In what _should_ have been a moment of gloating triumph? That _what is the matter with me this won’t work I’m about to discorporate horribly_ expression? That was the _funniest_ thing she’d seen in _millennia_. It was _worth_ getting banished, to have seen it! And the banishment hadn't even hurt!

Once her sputtering giggles died down and she had her composure back, she picked up her pen and slid a pad of official stationery into the center of her blotter.

_Dear Mr. Fell:_   
_Well done, you absurd little heavenly lickspittle. Tell anyone and I won’t leave one stone in Soho atop another, and don’t think I won’t find out. Fair’s fair, though; you told me exactly what I need to know, so think about that whenever you congratulate yourself._   
_Sincerely,_   
_Miss Terious_

She folded it, stamped, it, passed her hand over it, and sent it on its way to the sales counter of the holiest bookshop in Europe, if not all of earth.

Her next missive took longer to compose, and was written in triplicate:

_To: Crowley, Serpent of Eden_   
_From: Dagon, Lord of the Files_   
_Re: London experiments_

_You could have saved me some trouble if you’d told me how much fun your Mr. Fusswings is to poke at! As it is I had to make a separate trip at great personal inconvenience. He was pantswettingly scared - and that is some high-class terror - but he still tried to sell me a book! It’s the most amusement I’ve had in ages. It must be dreary for you, stuck up there with no one to practice your cleverness on, for decades on end, so I don’t blame you for finding excuses to pit yourself against his itty-bitty nimble wits, or for keeping him from anybody else’s notice. Some of our less resourceful brethren would tear him to pieces in moments, and waste him. I wouldn’t deprive you of your toy for worlds._

_But - you’ve gotten careless. While you’re using him to test your system, he’s learning from you. Did you know those wards in his shop can double as a banishing circle? And he’s a good deal too knowledgeable about Hell’s personnel. I don’t think he wants to shut down the contamination you’re feeding into his working. I think it’s got more information in it than you’ve realized. Smash both systems, and the next time you want to conduct an experiment on that scale, submit a proposal first so it can have proper oversight. You can keep teasing him, and by all means lob ideas at him to see if they stick, but be more careful!_

_Next time you buy a book, give me a head’s up. Maybe I’ll go with you. We could make him sweat rainbows, between us._

Beelz didn’t need to know about any of this, not with everything handled. One copy to Crowley, one in his file, and one down a pneumatic tube to the Abyss proper, where a certain class of damned soul would circulate and classify and file and refile it forever, along with all the other documents Hell generated in a day. They’d get a coffee break on the day they got caught up.

And finally:  
_To: All Field Personnel_  
_From: Dagon, Lord of the Files_  
_Re: Name Sharing_

_It has come to my attention that certain tempters, when encountering an angel in the field in circumstances that, among humans, call for introductions, are telling said angels their real names, making them easier to banish._

_This is stupid. Stop it. Or else._

That done, she picked up the next stack of reports. Oh, joy, Hastur was on top. All his reports read exactly the same, and he hadn’t the personal or political resources to get up to anything, but technically he was a Duke so she was stuck reading it.

Time passed the way time tended to pass in Hell, and she was well settled back into her routine when a report came in wrapped around a book. Dagon raised her eyebrows and examined, first the nearly-plain cream paper wrapper, then the blue boards and brown leather underneath, and finally the contents. _The Picture of Dorian Gray_, by Oscar Wilde - why did that sound familiar? She set it aside and looked at the report.

Crowley’s uneven hand - half printing, half cursive - ran through the usual subjects and only addressed the enclosure toward the end:

_As requested, the experiment has been dismantled. I think you’re overreacting, but what’s the point of being the boss if you can’t overreact when you want to? Don’t blame me if the numbers go down. If Mr. Fusswings knows too much about Hell he didn’t learn it from me. More likely that moldering book collection he has in the back. Of course I know his wards are also good for banishing! It’s all right as long as you don’t let him lock the door on you._

_Though you’re always welcome, I don’t buy books often, only to spook Mr. Fusswings once in awhile, and when I do, I’d rather not carry an elephant gun to hunt grouse, if it’s all the same to you. I’m enclosing the last one I picked up from him, on the off chance you’d like it and so sometime I can tell him I sent a book one of his friends wrote to Hell. That should put him in a tizzy. Prudery alert: 500 words got cut as “immoral” from the magazine release. Bet you can’t guess which ones. I’m so proud of modern morality, all that straining at gnats and swallowing camels._

That was that, then. When you came right down to it, Crowley would always be a low-risk demon because he had no political drive. You could rely on him, if you knew how to manage him. Feed him a few commendations, don’t be too strict on his hours, allow him his amusements, he’d perform. Yank on his chain often enough to remind him he wasn’t his own master and that stepping out of line had penalties, he’d concentrate. If she didn’t do anything rude like breaking his toy angel, he’d probably stay on task for another century or so, now. She stamped the report and put it into the pneumatic tube for the personnel files.

More reports awaited; but the book still lay in the middle of the blotter. No one had ever enclosed anything unrequested in a report before. Was it a - bribe? A present? What, exactly, about this thing (_or about her_?) had made first Mr. Fell and now Crowley think that she might like it? Why, for that matter, did either of them _care_ if she liked anything? As puzzles went, it was a small one, and not work-relevant; but the next report in the stack was Hastur’s again and dear Satan, those were boring!

She picked the book up, turning it over and over in her hands. The dust jacket felt smooth and cool and fragile. The smell of tobacco and new paper freshened the thick, humid air for a few inches. She had never read a book, or a poem, or anything at all for pleasure.

She was the boss, and could solve small, work-irrelevant puzzles if she wanted to.

Dagon opened_ The Picture of Dorian Gray_, and began to read.


	2. Bedside Vigil

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Aziraphale holds things together, a brief interlude

Aziraphale took most of a year, working nights and cutting back on the usual round of social activities and systematic blessing walks through the less prosperous parts of town, to dismantle their system. He couldn’t bring himself to “smash” it per Dagon’s orders, but unpicked it from the junction inward, alternating between Crowley’s half and his own from night to night. Anything resembling smashing would have risked the disruption of normal spiritual activity, with possible power surges and unpredictable consequences. The gradual undoing, however, allowed the original courses of the leys to reassert themselves gradually, and the social and moral currents to adapt, without anything a human or casual ethereal viewer would ever notice.

Only the resident angel saw the difference, and as the deep harmonics of the working dropped out of the city’s complex music, his heart grew more and more leaden in his chest, until the task was done and he could barely feel it beat.

Aziraphale had finished writing Crowley’s report half an hour ago, and everything in the flat was clean and in perfect order, yet still he sat in the wing chair he’d brought to the bedside, teaching his pulse to move again as he told the sleeping demon how he’d undone all their good work. Sleet tapped against the windowpane, but Aziraphale had worked out the proper mixture of blessing, miracle, and technology to keep the flat at a constant demon-comfortable temperature years ago, and the room should have felt cozy.

If Crowley had been awake, if they’d undone their working together as they had built it together, and they’d been sitting together in the bookshop, with pipes and Scotch and the gramophone, the sleet rattling and building up on the skylight, would he feel equally bereft? Or would Crowley already be spinning up a Better Idea, another project that would be more effective, that his horrifyingly jolly supervisor could be tricked into approving? Would that be enough to keep them cozy?

Any room with Crowley awake in it would be cozy. Someday, he would tell his demon that, and enjoy watching him pretend to be cross about it.

“I hope I haven’t mucked things up again, only enclosing the book suddenly seemed exactly like something you would do, and Oscar would be_ so_ amused at the idea of his novel being read in Hell. You’ll like Oscar so much! I’m longing to introduce you. You’ll try to outpose each other and egg each other on to be cutting and Aesthetic and, and oh, my dear, isn’t thirty years_ enough sleep_?”

Crowley’s head stirred, and he smiled the fond, barely-there smile that Aziraphale used to only see out of the corner of his eye, when talking about a book or a restaurant or some other enchanting new thing about which he had temporarily lost the capacity to stop talking. He sighed, and stroked the bright red hair on the pillow, wondering if he should cut it. It was shorter than Oscar’s, but longer than most men of business sported it these days. He simply wasn’t certain what styles Crowley would choose to carry to extremes anymore, and was fairly confident that, should any of Hell’s representatives burst in to disrupt his nap, they wouldn’t recognize anything wrong, whatever he looked like, so it shouldn’t matter. As long as the flat had periodicals with current dates, and the latest gadgets occupying the correct spaces (presently, a gasogene and a gramophone in the parlor), Crowley would be able to create the illusion of having only slept for a week or so.

If he ever woke up at all.

Nonsense. That was no way to think! What were thirty years, out of eternity? Aziraphale knew he needed to buck up. So he was tired, and discouraged, and lonely, tonight. So what? He couldn’t expect anything else, in the circumstances. Tomorrow night he’d go to the club, and if that sweet young man still wanted to teach him to dance, he’d let him try, which would be hilarious for everyone, because he would inevitably fail spectacularly, but at least his corporation would have to get all its interior parts moving properly in order to make the attempt, and then he’d feel better. Meanwhile, he felt bad, but Crowley was _safe_. Everything else was bearable.

“If you’re still sleeping, I suppose you must still need to sleep,” he said. “It’s hard without you, but I can manage, as long as you get what you need.”

Crowley rolled over. Aziraphale told himself to leave, and didn't.


	3. Confusion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Crowley wakes up to a drastically changed world.

_Whump!_

Crowley stretched and blinked in response to the new percussion in the London night symphony. All her limbs informed her that she had lain still too long, that she needed to move, move, _move now,_ so instead of her usual long luxurious waking she hopped out of bed and went to the lighter square of darkness that marked the window. Another new noise, a stuttering semi-familiar chatter, and – something was wrong with the _air_ -

She opened the heavy curtains, raised the pane, and leaned out, taking a deep breath with her mouth open. The basic town-smell of smoke and other natural by-products of cramming a few hundred people into every acre tasted too complicated, with new elements she couldn’t catalog, and - wait - moonbeams pointing upward? Sweeping across the sky? And _that_ wasn’t - all right, lots of coal smoke, but also something else burned and the light and darkness didn’t mix right - a building on fire? The atmosphere was - wrong, it was _all wrong_.

She sat on the sill and leaned out backward to see the sky better. The chill night breeze cut through her nightshirt, bringing her a green smell from the park. High above, a whale swam, dark against smog cover, crisscrossed by frantic reversed moonbeams.

_What?_

Was this one of those dreams in which she thought she was awake until she noticed something so wonky it shocked her awake and she got up again, only to notice something else wonky enough to wake her up again and on and on until she finally managed to wake for real? She hated those things. Maybe she should lean over too far and fall to the pavement, to break the cycle.

Below, someone wolf-whistled. “Stop it, Dick, she might be in trouble,” someone else objected, before calling up: “Miss? Are you all right? Miss? Is the house afire? Do you need assistance?”

Miss? Oh. Right. Her corporation wasn’t shaped the way it had been when she’d gone to bed, and respectable Mayfair women didn’t hang out of windows in nightshirts. Respectable Mayfair men didn’t, either, but _if_ they did, the consequences would be less dire. Oh, well, they were down_ there_ and she was up _here_, and as for what they thought of her, who cared? “There’s a whale in the sky,” she called down. “Why is there a whale in the sky?”

The men below exchanged words she couldn’t make out, all her attention focused upward. A smaller shape shadowed the whale as it moved against the wind. That wasn’t a true whale shape - if only she had field glasses - How big was it? How far away? She couldn’t tell. But something seemed familiar about the way the smaller shape swayed as it trailed beneath the larger. Hadn’t she seen something like that before? By daylight?

“Miss. You should go to the tube. You’ll be safe there.”

What were they talking about? The cool air had her thoroughly awake now, and the smell of the parks said “autumn.” So, she’d slept for a couple of months. Or maybe she’d gone a full year again? “Tube” must be new slang. The not-whale shifted in time with the strange throb in the air and oh! _That’s_ what it was! “A balloon! With a gondala! Why are they flying a balloon over London at night? And how does it move against the wind?”

“Zeppelin, miss. It’s an air raid. Can’t you hear the engines? And the new guns at Finsbury? Better go to the tube, fast as you can. The bombing’s not stopping at the East End tonight.”

Downward movement streaked the sky below the whale, disappearing behind buildings taller than any buildings had been when she went to bed, and _whump_! The light changed again as something caught fire. Crowley mouthed “zeppelin,” a new word, meaning “balloon with an engine,” which was _brilliant and wonderful_ and she must get on one, somehow, but -_ guns? Raids?_ Was England at war? With _who_? And they were_ raiding_? From the _air?_ Victoria was related to half the Continent and most rulers either loved or were soundly in awe of her - who would _dare_ endanger her by tossing fire bombs this close to the Palace? Was it a revolution maybe? _How long had she been asleep?_

Crowley pulled herself inside, buzzing and fizzing. She had to get_ out there_ and see this strange new world! With a snap of her fingers she lit the lamp. Her spectacles rested on the washstand, atop a stack of periodicals. Good old Aziraphale -

Aziraphale. _That_ was what was wrong. _Their system was down!_

She would have leaped out the window in the nightshirt, except that the thought of Aziraphale opened up all her senses and there he was - at one of the fires - where else would London’s guardian angel be? Burning bright and clear, he was fine. But - _their system_ \- it should have been purring all around her, binding them together with London and, through London, with the wider world, sending their influences out along leys, greasing the wheels of free will, and it was _gone_. As if it had never been. But -

_Fraternizing. Right._

She sat down abruptly, on the floor, breathing around the pressure of the steam piston in her chest. The room was clean. His curse warded the door. His blessing enveloped her - she could feel it - complex layers of blessing, too much to pick apart right now, but the top layers clearly said _no firebombs here_, she’d been as safe in bed as treasure in a vault, whatever rained down upon her roof. He’d protected her, and provided for her, and and and taken it upon himself to dismantle their great shared working instead of waking her up to talk it over -

So. This was the world she had woken into, one where balloons dropped fire on the most powerful country in the world and she and Aziraphale were once again aloof from each other.

She snatched up the periodicals - _Punch_, the _Times_, one called _The Strand_ which was illustrated, good, because she couldn’t possibly be bothered to read print right now, and - wait - the mastheads - those numbers - _1915_? That wasn’t - that couldn’t - was that the _year_?

Crowley could calculate miraculous vectors, force, and torque in six dimensions in her head, but right now simple addition and subtraction made her brain stutter and she had to do the sum three times before she faced up to the reality that she had slept for fifty-three years.

Dagon breathing down her neck, a threat to both of them; Aziraphale (_obviously_, in retrospect) going into one of his panic cycles and she’d just, just gone to sleep and left him to deal with - _every_thing, _any_thing, she didn’t even_ know_ what, though no doubt he’d left meticulous notes which she could not possibly sit still to read right now, and _she_ was supposed to protect _him,_ that was the _whole point_ of asking for holy water, if he got into trouble with her bosses she was supposed to _show up_ but now he was off dealing with a fire and she was sealed safe into this old stagnant building while everyone else in it ran off to the tube, _what tube_, what was_ going on?_ No wonder he’d taken the working apart, she was nothing but a drag on its operation, this building should have been demolished and replaced at _least_ forty years ago and she had to move,_ move_, move _now_ -

Crowley raced to the wardrobe, dragged out clothing, modified it in front of the mirror till it mimicked a randomly chosen magazine illustration reasonably well. Her natural figure seemed to be fashionable right now; good. Skirts flared and stopped above the ankle; even better. She forced her feet into spool heels and pointed toes (_careful, these feet were a present, don’t muck them up)_ and went looking for her hat, finding it on the coatrack in the parlor and morphing it into something broad-brimmed and low-crowned that she could skewer slantwise onto the chignon she twisted her hair into and there should be a feather but getting her wings out would take time, go_ now_, now, go go _go go go_ -

Out into the streets of London she ran, aura tucked in tight around her, racing toward the fire, lots of fires now, Exeter and Wellington were impassable, and she wanted the one with the white radiance mixed with it, which was the Lyceum - _of course_ if a theater burned Aziraphale would be there! - so she found a way, stopping when she saw him, blazing white radiance, smudged with soot, bustling from person to person, cups of tea, bandages, _burns what burns? Everything’s all right madam, sir, here is what you need; oh, you have this thing I believe that person over there needs that yes by all means take it to them:_ he was fine, good, exactly as he always was, dressed up a bit - he must have been in the audience. No whiskers, and he’d lost his hat, and an Ingenue and a Principal Boy were hysterical at him in a familiar and comfortable way because he was their friend, he was, he loved them. All of them.

She realized she had nothing to say to him, not right now, he had angeling to do, and she, _she_ needed to move to move_ to move -_

Searchlights and fires and vibrations under the ground and men telling her to go to the tube, which she realized at last meant the tunnels being dug when she went to sleep, the interconnecting tubular underworlds of the Metropolitan Railway, now fully functional and too deep for bombs to touch. She started to explore, put her feet to the steps, but was seized by terror that if she started down she wouldn’t stop till she reached Hell, so she grinned saucily at her advisors and skipped along her merry way, learning the new sounds, the new smells, the rattle of the antiaircraft guns, the thrum of distant engines. Even the traffic was different. Hardly any of it, for one thing, with the zeppelins going over, but she stopped dead in her tracks the first time she saw a motor car go by - no horse? No rail? You couldn’t fit a steam engine on something as small as that, could you?_ Oh brave new world, that has such devices in it!_

The zeppelins went away, chased by the guns or perhaps running out of bombs, leaving behind smoke and flame and a city as jittery as Crowley herself. She darted from light to shadow, from street to court to alley to street, catching snatches of conversation (_Those Huns have some nerve! Baby-killers!)_, confronting posters that loomed at her out of the dark (_It is far better to face the bullets than to be killed at home by a bomb!_), reading placard headlines by newsagents (_Miss Cavell **Murdered** by **Huns**_), studying shop windows full of fashionably warlike mannequins, stamping out a small fire that no one else saw.

The sun rose, smoky and smoggy and cold. London, never still, moved faster, its music swelling with the light. New information flowed into her from a hundred thousand clues and signs and hints. The king’s name was George. The enemy was Germany, somehow a country now instead of a gaggle of states. France, bizarrely, was an ally. Above her head, buildings soared, glittering with vast panes of glass. Below her feet, intricate patriotic chalk pictures on the sidewalks were a thing now. On the streets, people turned out in droves to see the damage done by the raid and she let herself be carried from place to place with them, down sidewalks, onto omnibuses (still horse-drawn, alas) and off again, through parks, through factory yards, through narrow courts and broad squares, _go go go go go_ -

London was bigger, it was busier, it was different, it was the same, it wasn’t hers and Aziraphale’s anymore but she would make it hers again and Aziraphale - Aziraphale - it was his, still, he had kept it, but she didn’t know what that meant, whether he had kept any of it _for her_, she’d think about that later, right now she had to watch as people poured in and out of the tube station, as a motor car forced its way through a stream of horse traffic, as a boy rang a bell frantically and rode something like but not at all like a velocipede, scattering angry grownups before him like ducks along the pavement. Her hat did not suit her. She pushed it and pulled it and stretched it till it was steep and slanted, and stole feathers from a raven to make the profile steeper still. In and out of shops - of arcades - of museums - of dizzying tall department stores trying to sell everything at once -- and what was a Cinematograph, when it was home?

She paid a penny at a storefront, in a working class district, she wasn’t sure which one, she was lost and didn’t care. Inside she found flickering darkness, peanut shells crunching underfoot, people talking and laughing on benches, men who smelled of smoke, women with coarse hands that clapped in delight, children jumping up and down and shrieking, an organ playing, as light danced on the white screen upon one wall, a shady villain tying a big-eyed heroine to a railroad track. Daguerrotypes, but moving - telling a story. She sat down beside a child and asked: “What’s happening?”

She watched the program through - the heroine about to be cut down by a train when the scene ended, and the child assuring her that next week, in the next chapter, she would surely be rescued, but they’d have to pay another penny to see that. _The Prisoner of Zenda_, which was wonderful, all swords and impersonations and a villain as dashing as the hero. A farce full of physical comedy worthy of the most relentless Elizabethan clown. The child happily explained everything to her, reading the title cards aloud, until her brother vomited and she had to take him out. Crowley staggered back to the street, head reeling, heart singing. Fifty-three years and the humans had captured light and movement, delved halfway to hell, freed themselves from rails and horses, risen into the sky and _trampled_ on it - She must catch up, catch up,_ catch up_ -

Aziraphale could explain it all, but Aziraphale had taken their system apart and she didn’t _want_ him to explain, didn’t want to sit on the wrong side of the Do Not Cross line and get mired in blue eyes and his voice and her stupid _feelings_, she didn’t _want_ feelings, she wanted to _find out_ -

The streets were all different. The streets were all the same. She knew this strange place, had lived here when it was a glorified village and when it was the Great Metropolis and she lived here still. It belonged to her no matter how often its smells and sounds and rhythms changed.

When rain began she fell in with a group of women dashing for shelter in a tea shop. They were loud comradely bluestockings who accepted her unquestioningly as one of themselves, all determined to find work that men had left behind in order to be soldiers, and do it better, and be paid commensurately. Their collective sins were Wrath and Pride, which they carried like banners flapping in the wind. Information and indignation poured into her ears in a torrent of words old and new: Boche, Anzac, motor car, gramophone, marcel, Marxism, typewriter, bicycle, telephone, machine gunner, aeroplane. The oldest, fierce and pale, chain-smoked cigarettes and wore a man’s shirt; the youngest, mild and brown, dressed almost like a soldier and wept for Edith Cavell, some sort of heroine who’d been executed two days before. Crowley exchanged addresses with them, and they expressed astonishment at hers. She grinned, flourishing the cigarette she’d cadged: “Inherited it from my bachelor great-uncle. Dreary place. Good liquor. Come see.”

They came, riding the tube (she linked arms with Edna and Lola, knowing they would brace her, that Hell would not suck her down when anchored by these humans), and then dashed through rain to her outmoded building, looming soot-stained and fanciful and _torpid_. She wanted to blow it up and burn it down. Respectable old men she didn’t recognize (all her recognizable tenants must be dead by now) stared at the motley assortment of women tracking mud across the marble foyer. She unlocked her private stair door, ushering them before her, all dripping and laughing.

They laughed even harder at her old-fashioned parlor, at the stiff dark furniture that had been the epitome of fashion when she fell asleep, at the oil lamps, at the pictures, at the flocked wallpaper, at the frock coat hanging on the rack; but when she opened the sideboard to reveal the liquor collection they cheered. Miss Cavell’s mourner Mabel discovered the gramophone and unwittingly showed Crowley how to use it. Millie found a flat disc, to the music on which they could do a dance called the Castle Walk, once they had rolled up the Persian carpet and banished it and all the furniture to the fringes of the room. Crowley danced appallingly and laughed gleefully, trying to lead with Mabel, trying to follow with Edna of the endless cigarettes. Lola, Millie, Ethel, and Cora danced together and disputed whether the foxtrot was passe or not. They drank a great deal, and smoked a great deal, and called her Lilith until the third drink, when she became Lil.

Eventually Cora discovered the kitchen and declared it not only empty, but unusable, and the question of supper arose. They began to pool their money and discuss places in Mayfair where they had always wanted to eat. Crowley wandered into her office, which was almost exactly as she had left it; except that she had all-new pens, with screw-on caps, and the drawers of her cabinet had been neatly labeled: 1850-1899; 1900 - . It had never been her habit to keep copies of reports more than ten years old, if that; but this century was different and she had a conscientious clerk.

Crowley put her hand upon the handle of the second drawer, and drew it back. She had guests. Aziraphale had been doing both their jobs for fifty-three years. She could wait a few hours more to look that in the face. To consider what it meant. Opening her desk instead, she withdrew a case full of crisp pound notes and carried it into the parlor. “What do you think, girls? Can the lot of us dine well enough on a hundred pounds?”

Their eyes grew huge and out they sallied for an ecstatic evening of self-indulgence at the rich girl’s expense. Their first two choices of restaurant turned them away for not being sufficiently well-dressed, which struck Crowley as reason enough to curse one with rats and the other with black beetles. Their third choice proved willing to take her money in exchange for beef wellington and desserts that would make an angel’s face shine. Crowley kept an eye open for a fluffy white head, an ear open for a genially prim voice, as she played at eating; but he did not come in. Had he realized by now that she was awake? She relaxed her grip upon her aura, let it loose to signal where she was to anyone who had the senses to perceive and the desire to find her.

After supper they went to Drury Lane, where every turn was more or less patriotic and warlike. They all sang “Rule Britannia,” even Edna, who made no secret of her opinion that the War was all about making rich men richer and poor boys deader. No Zeppelins dropped fire, tonight, but the reverse moonbeams - searchlights - powered by_ electricity_, the stuff of lightning - probed the sky, turning drizzle into streaks of light.

Lola, Millie, and Mabel went off toward the tube together with their arms around each other’s waists, singing _What's the use in worrying? It never was worthwhile_; and Edna tried to insist on walking Crowley home. “And who will walk _you_ home, pray?” Crowley asked, as Cora and Ethel, waiting for an omnibus, argued pleasantly over who had first claim on the bath tonight.

“I’m too old and tough and poor for anyone to bother with,” said Edna.

“That’s never true of anybody,” said Crowley, “and before you start working your way up to hinting that you could stay with me tonight, you should know that My Heart is Another’s.”

“If you tell me you have pledged your troth to a brave soldier boy I’ll slap you for lying,” said Edna, lighting two cigarettes on one match. “We’re both too old for that nonsense.”

“Yes, we are,” said Crowley. “Old enough to know what we want, and not to play games about it. I won’t tease you like that, and I won’t let you tease me.” She accepted the proffered cigarette, took a drag, and blew out a wreath of smoke to hover in the misty air. “Certainly not when we both know it’s Mabel you want.”

Edna snorted out her own plume of smoke. “Mabel is_ eighteen_. Near as nothing a child. No idea what, much less who, she wants yet. So want must be my master and I must look elsewhere.”

Crowley considered her options. Mabel was only one want among many here: respect, and meaningful work, and the means to dress and dine and show herself in the finest restaurants, and grind beneath her sensible shoes all those who would deny her that because she was female, with a wart on her forehead, and without anyone from whom to inherit buildings in Mayfair. Edna could sin gloriously, if shown the way, and it was past time for Crowley to do her job again so no weary angel had to. “And if I lie there knowing you’re thinking of Mabel, and you lie there knowing I’m thinking of my angel, who will be satisfied? We both have better things to do. Tell you what, though. I’m still thinking what to do with my inheritance. I’ll visit you tomorrow, and we can talk it over. I’m sure you give good advice.”

“You’ll never visit me,” said Edna, a sad smile around her cigarette. “It’s tonight or never, Mayfair Lil! Money’s like that. In a week you’ll have forgotten you ever met a working girl. But it’s all right. We didn’t make the world.”

“If we don’t, who does?” Crowley bowed and kissed her hand, and hailed a cab, and went home alone.

There, by oily outdated lamplight, she studied her bank book. In default of instructions, her man of business and his heirs and assigns had gone for steady, stable investments over the trouble-stirring ones she favored as a professional duty. She’d have to study the state of the world before she decided how best to ride capitalism’s natural tendency to favor Hell, and before she could give directions to anyone she’d have to prepare the necessary conditions for the existence of Lilith Crowley, single female property owner of mature years, heir to the late A. Crowley. Ugh.

Not tonight. She couldn’t focus on any of that tonight.

Steeling herself, Crowley pulled open the lower cabinet drawer. Aziraphale had filed each year’s reports with thumb tabs pasted to the edges so as to guide her to the different events she might need to know about in the life she hadn’t been living. She scanned the tabs. _Commendations_ \- had he really earned her some, or had he only piggybacked on the human capacity for startlingly original evil? No need to know that, yet. Not finding what she needed, she opened the upper drawer. Here: _System Dismantled, _on the file for1892, thirty years into her long sleep.

Had it stopped working on its own then, dragged down by her inert weight? Or had he gotten sick of it all after three decades of doing Hell’s uncongenial work, as well as Heaven’s, as well as his own, as well as watching over her, all on his stingy miracle budget? They needed each other, no matter what they’d said on that terrible day; and he would never break faith, that wasn’t even a question; but what clearer signal could he send that closer association was not worth the cost to him, than to destroy what they had made together?

No doubt the reason was laid out clearly enough in the flagged report. They had written many reports together since the Arrangement; often, they had made a night of it, knocking out both sets along with a bottle of something expensive that Crowley brought. They knew each other’s quirks of style. They knew how to code information so it would be transparent between them and opaque to anyone else. Aziraphale might be cold about it; he might be anxious; he might endeavor to be kind; but he would neither make excuses nor beat around the bush. Once Crowley read the relevant report, she’d know where she stood.

Her chest hurt. “Sorry, angel,” she whispered, closing the drawer. “Soon. I’ll get all my ducks in a row and I won’t make you carry me anymore and we’ll see where we are. Soon.”

Crowley returned to the parlor to play all her gramophone records, one after another, as loudly as she could make the gramophone play, and to practice the Castle Walk.

The twentieth century was going to be _bloody marvelous._

-30-


End file.
